NAC BredaNAC Breda exists because of a compromise reached at a tense meeting. On 19 September 1912 the Breda clubs NOAD and ADVENDO merged. At the founding meeting NOAD wanted the new club to be called NOAD, a name ADVENDO could not accept, and in the end Frans Konert proposed NAC, short for NOAD ADVENDO Combinatie. The meeting agreed, and on 28 October 1912 the club was admitted to the second Southern Division. It took less than ten years for it to become the best team in the country. The club's nickname is Parel van het Zuiden (the Pearl of the South), its classic home shirt is yellow with a black sash, and its supporters are known as the Yellow Army.
The club became champion of the Southern Division in 1919, which gave it a place in the four-team national championship competition. In 1920/21 it won its regional division without losing a match, with 17 wins and 3 draws and a goal difference of 64–8. In the national competition it then beat Go Ahead, Ajax and Be Quick 1887 to win the Dutch championship. It remains the club's only league title. NAC was also among the first Dutch clubs to play international matches, and one early friendly ended in a 4–0 win over Real Madrid. The man at the centre of this era was Antoon “Rat” Verlegh, who played for the club from its foundation until 1931, won six Southern titles and eight caps for the national team, and later served in the KNVB. He died in 1960, and his nickname, earned for his quick movement, now gives its name to the stadium.
Professional football arrived in the Netherlands in 1954, and in 1955 NAC won the 1A League. In the championship round it finished second to its rival Willem II. For the rest of the century the club was mostly a mid-table side, and it was relegated in 1999. The Eredivisie years had their own heroes, among them the striker Pierre van Hooijdonk, who made his name in Breda before moving to Celtic and Nottingham Forest.
The greatest night in the club's history came in 1973. In the second round of the KNVB Cup NAC eliminated the holders Ajax on penalties after a 2–2 draw on 10 December 1972. On 31 May 1973, one day after Ajax had won the European Cup, NAC met NEC in the final in Rotterdam. Stanley Bish scored first, Addy Brouwers made it 2–0 in the 75th minute, and about 25,000 NAC supporters celebrated the club's only cup win. The victory brought a place in the 1973/74 Cup Winners' Cup, where NAC lost in the first round to the eventual winners, 1. FC Magdeburg. It lost the 1974 cup final 6–0 to PSV.
After 1975 the club played its home matches on Saturday evenings, which created a distinct culture, the Avondje NAC, a name for the home end that became known for its noise. The stadium, which holds about 19,000 spectators, was renamed Rat Verlegh Stadion in 2006. Under Ernie Brandts NAC reached the cup semi-finals in 2007 and 2008, took part in the play-offs for Champions League qualification in 2008 and for European places in 2009, with the Ghanaian Matthew Amoah among its scorers.
The club returned to the Eredivisie in 2024 after five seasons in the second tier, winning the promotion play-offs, and spent much of the 2025/26 season in the lower half of the table. After more than a century, the idea of a club created by two rivals who found a common name remains at the centre of its identity.